Week of November 17, 2008

More evidence video moving online

Friday, November 21, 2008

While Youtube is the huge gorilla in the online video space, broadcast content provider Hulu is continuing to make more and more waves, with the latest information being predictions that Hulu will make as much money as Youtube in 2009 with a fraction of the traffic. Why? It's focus on professionally created broadcast shows and movies. Now comes word that Sony is getting more aggressive in this space, preparing to relaunch Crackle, their online video destination.

Crackle was originally called Grouper before it was bought by Sony in 2006, and now Sony is bolstering its online content with some original shows, including a show by the influential comedy troupe The Groundlings. It's new "season" begins on December 1. The real interesting note here is that Crackle is focusing on original shows while Hulu repurposes broadcast shows and movies. No site has yet to break out with mass-appeal success by using original produced content. So it is worth paying attention to Crackle to see if it can generate this kind of traffic.

Cell-Phone-Only Participation in PPM Increases

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Although Arbitron has included cell-phone-only households in the recruitment in PPM markets right from the start, the installation rate has lagged 20 points behind those with landlines. The reason is that, until recently, Arbitron would have to install a landline in these homes to allow uploading of the PPM data. But that required respondents to take time off from work for the installation.

Arbitron's solution has been to supply cell-phone-only households with cell phone modems to make the PPM upload process smoother. These modems do not require the installation of landlines. The result?...participation rates that have pushed cell-phone-only participation rates up to the same level as landline households.

More on Nielsen's Return to US Radio

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The announcement of Nielsen's new ratings system in a number of small markets dominated by Cumulus and Clear Channel has raised a number of key questions about the future of radio ratings, not the least of which is the impact on Arbitron's bottom line. Here are some of the most interesting questions:
· What impact will this have on Arbitron's move to the PPM? The new Nielsen service will rely on diaries, but with some important differences from Arbitron's legacy system. Since Arbitron has its hands full with the aggressive rollout of the PPM in larger markets,
· Will advertisers accept a roll back to once a year ratings in an environment where they have been seeking timelier, not less frequent, ratings reports? After all, the move to the PPM is based on the need for radio to deliver timely, verifiable ratings.
· What will Arbitron do counter the moves by Nielsen to oversample 18-34's, include cell-phone-only households through the use of address-based recruitment, etc.?

Nielsen Returns To Radio

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The Cumulus/Clear Channel arrangement with Nielsen means the latter's return to radio ratings after a 40-year absence. Nielsen, which measures virtually every other medium in the US, has continued to measure radio in other countries around the world. Nielsen will return to US radio in 50 markets starting next Spring. Cumulus will be Nielsen's customer in all 50 markets, with Clear Channel also signing on in 17 of those markets.

In looking at the Cumulus/Clear Channel proposal, the Nielsen methodology will differ from Arbitron in several ways:
· Address-based recruitment, rather than telephone-based recruitment means that cell-phone-only households will be treated the same as those with landlines.
· One 8-week survey per year means a return to the "good old days" of the '60s and '70s when stations went over the top promotionally to try to influence the numbers.
· 40% larger sample sizes than Arbitron may mean better sampling overall.
· Oversampling of the 18-34 demo should improve the performance of this hard-to-reach demo.
· Respondents will get a sticker with a pre-printed list of stations available in a given market which may mean more recalled stations per diarykeeper and could possibly reduce confusion when respondents identify the stations they've listened to.

From a little thing, a big business

Monday, November 17, 2008

We saw it last year with the release of Google Calendar--a big company releases a new feature, and it single-handedly destroys a whole category of businesses. When Google released their calendar, companies like Spongecell and 30 Boxes--both of which targeted the online calendar business exclusively--were put in a position in which neither can have been said to recover. That's the trouble with little categories that can potentially yield big business--the chance of a major company co-opting your position is always a danger.

We see that this week with Facebook and birthday reminders. Birthday alerts are a niche business with some thriving successes. So much so that the Facebook application designed for just that--"Birthday Alert"--has nearly 200,000 users. Now that small business has been made irrelevant since Facebook has integrated the functionality into its core platform. What is left for Birthday Alert? Not much.

Perhaps it is just an issue of timing. As tech blog Techcrunch points out--the massive social network Bebo began as a birthday reminder service. So the idea of taking a small idea and making it big can work--you just have to do two things: Work independently of a major service and be well ahead of the game. Bebo did both of those things. Birthday Alert only did one.